Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution | Page 4

the first, who loved systems, trains, TX-0, music,
parliamentary procedure, pranks, and hacking.
Bob Saunders Jolly, balding TMRC hacker who married early, hacked till late at night
eating "lemon gunkies," and mastered the "CBS Strategy on Spacewar.
Warren Schwader Big blond hacker from rural Wisconsin who went from the assembly

line to software stardom but couldn't reconcile the shift with his devotion to Jehovah's
Witnesses.
David Silver Left school at fourteen to be mascot of AI lab; maker of illicit keys and
builder of a tiny robot that did the impossible.
Dan Sokol Long-haired prankster who reveled in revealing technological secrets at
Homebrew Club. Helped "liberate" Alair BASIC on paper tape.
Les Solomon Editor of Popular Electroics, the puller of strings who set the computer
revolution into motion.
Marty Spergel The Junk Man, the Homebrew member who supplied circuits and cables
and could make you a deal for anything.
Richard Stallman The Last of the Hackers, who vowed to defend the principles of
Hackerism to the bitter end. Remained at MIT until there was no one to eat Chinese food
with.
Jeff Stephenson Thirty-year-old martial arts veteran and hacker who was astounded that
joining Sierra On-Line meant enrolling in Summer Camp.
Jay Sullivan MAddeningly clam wizard-level programmer at Informatics who impressed
Ken Williams by knowing the meaning of the word "any."
Dick Sunderland Chalk-complexioned MBA who believed that firm managerial
bureaucracy was a worth goal, but as president of Sierra On-Line found that hackers
didn't think that way.
Gerry Sussman Young MIT hacker branded "loser" because he smoked a pipe and
"munged" his programs; later became "winner" by algorithmic magic.
Margot Tommervik With her husband Al, long-haired Margot parlayed her game show
winnings into a magazine that deified the Apple Computer.
Tom Swift Terminal Lee Felsenstein's legendary, never-to-be-built computer terminal
which would give the user ultimate leave to get his hands on the world.
TX-0 Filled a small room, but in the late fifties this $3 million machine was the world's
first personal computer--for the community of MIT hackers that formed around it.
Jim Warren Portly purveyor of "techno-gossip" at Homebrew, he was first editor of
hippie-styled Dr. Dobbs Journal, later started the lucrative Computer Faire.
Randy Wigginton Fifteen-year-old member of Steve Wozniak's kiddie corps, he help
Woz trundle the Apple II to Homebrew. Still in high school when he became Apple's first
software employee.
Ken Williams Arrogant and brilliant young programmer who saw the writing on the CRT
and started Sierra On-Line to make a killing and improve society by selling games for the
Apple computer.
Roberta Williams Ken Williams' timid wife who rediscovered her own creativity by
writing "Mystery House," the first of her many bestselling computer games.
Steven "Woz" Wozniak Openhearted, technologically daring hardware hacker from San
Jose suburbs. Woz built the Apple Computer for the pleasure of himself and friends.

PART ONE True Hackers CAMBRIDGE: The Fifties and Sixties

CHAPTER 1
THE TECH MODEL RAILROAD CLUB

Just why Peter Samson was wandering around in Building 26 in the middle of the night is
a matter that he would find difficult to explain. Some things are not spoken. If you were
like the people whom Peter Samson was coming to know and befriend in this, his
freshman year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the winter of 1958-59, no
explanation would be required. Wandering around the labyrinth of laboratories and
storerooms, searching for the secrets of telephone switching in machine rooms, tracing
paths of wires or relays in subterranean steam tunnels . . . for some, it was common
behavior, and there was no need to justify the impulse, when confronted with a closed
door with an unbearably intriguing noise behind it, to open the door uninvited. And then,
if there was no one to physically bar access to whatever was making that intriguing noise,
to touch the machine, start flicking switches and noting responses, and eventually to
loosen a screw, unhook a template, jiggle some diodes and tweak a few connections.
Peter Samson and his friends had grown up with a specific relationship to the world,
wherein things had meaning only if you found out how they worked. And how would you
go about that if not by getting your hands on them?
It was in the basement of Building 26 that Samson and his friends discovered the EAM
room. Building 26 was a long glass-and-steel structure, one of MIT's newer buildings,
contrasting with the venerable pillared structures that fronted the Institute on
Massachusetts Avenue. In the basement of this building void of personality, the EAM
room. Electronic Accounting Machinery. A room that housed machines which ran like
computers.
Not many people in 1959 had even seen a computer, let alone touched one. Samson, a
wiry, curly-haired redhead with a way of extending his vowels